Be a Positive Force in Fandom, Not an Asshole
Filed Under: Speculative Fiction, creativity
If there was one thing that drew me in particular to genre fandom as a whole, it was the boundless and unashamed enthusiasm that genre fans had. Fans loved things, and their passion was worn on their sleeves. They weren’t ashamed to like science fiction in general, or, say, Star Trek in particular, despite there considerable societal disaproval of such things. My nerdy ways got me made fun of as much as my big ears, growing up.
Today, with Generation X and Y in full force, there’s been a bit of a shift, I think. Sarcasm is something our generations prize, as well as a well-cultured sense of irony. But what’s worse, when combined with those things, is a certain odd form of self-awareness that leads to what I’d like to talk about:
It’s cooler to dislike something than it is to like something today. It’s more culturally acceptable in my peer groups, particularly online, to express disapproval of something than it is to express enthusiasm.
I’m not against criticism. It’s only by being critical of art forms that we understand them and learn to improve them. Thoughtful criticism is a great thing. So let’s take that off the table of what I’m talking about. I’m going to talk about how we express our dislike of things, why, and when we do it.
First of all, I think it’s an undeniable trend that being enthusiastic for something is much less of a draw of attention than being highly critical of something, particularly online. If I write a blog post that is critical of a popular movie, it receives at least twice as many views as if I wrote a glowing recommendation. It’ll receive twice as many comments too, and often, what comments the glowing recommendation receives are arguments against the opinion. There are a lot of reasons for this, but in general, I’d like to see us change it in our corner of the web.
I used to be a regular on the blog Metafilter. We called a certain phenomenon “your favorite band sucks.” Whenever anyone expressed an appreciation or an author or a band, five people came along to criticize the author or band. Here’s where we come to my first rule of the positive fan.
Every expression of appreciation online is not an opportunity for you to voice your disapproval.
It’s fine for you not to like something. But every time someone else says they like something that you don’t is not the best time for you to piss in the cornflakes of internet commenting. Every discussion is not a debate on the merits and demerits of something. In fact, let’s put this out there in plain terms: every discussion online does not have to be and should not be “fair and balanced.” Know your audience, and know the scene you’re in–will they appreciate your perspective, or will they think you’re just being an asshole?
Which brings me to my next point:
Don’t be an asshole. Remember: everything you criticize is the hard work of a human being with feelings.
Don’t assume that the creator of what you are trashing won’t read it. It’s the internet. We’re all supernatural beings that can be summoned by the use of our name thanks to Google. Don’t be an asshole, and don’t resort to ad hominem attacks. Be critical of the work, and not the creator. Every creative act should be encouraged, even if you consider it a failure. All art is a learning process.
If you must be critical, be specific.
So you have a burning desire to share your disapproval of something and you just can’t be stopped. Fine. Leave your critical remark, but here are critcial remarks that do nothing but hurt people:
‘It sucked.”
“Don’t quit your day job”
“I want my [PERIOD OF TIME SPENT] back.”
“Who likes this shit?”
Do you see the trend here? We’ve all seen these comments. Most of us have probably left them at some point. What’s missing here is substance.
You owe your fellow humans to be specific in your criticism. It’s in everyone’s best interests for a creator to improve, and they can’t use your feedback to do that if it doesn’t have any substance.
I assume part of the point of the urge to share our strong dislike of something online, besides the weird Gen-Y/X need to feel cool via disparaging things, is that we can’t stand the idea that someone does like it, and we want to explain to them why their enthusiasm is misplaced. We’re not going to do that with vague generalities. Be specific, and be polite. Consider sharing our enthusiasm for something else as a counterpoint so others know we’re not just being an asshole for the sake of it. Is it something we would say to the creator’s face, in person, while they ball their fists and start to turn red? No? Dial down the venom, and remember:
All opinions are not equal. But if you think yours really matters most, you’re probably wrong.
Most people just aren’t going to really care what your opinion of something is, unless they know you. If you’re a random stranger leaving feedback on a blog, don’t expect your comment to hold any special weight with the other readers or the commenters. Don’t get increasingly angry when people aren’t swayed to your antagonistic point of view. Silently mark these people off as morons like you do to every human being you disapprove of, and move on.
Moving on to the Positive Part
Thus far, I’ve really focused on the negative, because I know that’s what is going to get the most attention. Now that I have it, let’s talk about how we can reverse the trend a little. As a group, working together with a common goal, I think we can lighten the tone a bit.
If you like something, say so.
Positive, supportive comments are always far outnumbered by the negative ones. We need to change this, or at least tips the scales back the other way a bit. If you take nothing else away from this sanctimonious blog post, just listen to this part. When you like something, whether that something be a story, a book, a website, a blog post, a podcast, a painting, whatever–when you like something, tell someone. You can broadcast it on your blog or your twitter. That is awesome. Or you can go narrowband and leave a comment for the creator or write an email. Hell, you want to really make someone’s day, send them a snail mail letter.
We as an internet populace have a tendency to be quiet when we’re approving, and save our keystrokes for when we’re angry. This is wrong, and I think we can change this. Let’s put the enthusiastic fan back into the mix. We can’t all hate everything. Let’s see if we can aim for bringing the positive/negative comment ratio up to 1:1. And hey–the only thing worse than a bunch of nasty comments and feedback is no feedback at all. Don’t assume someone else will say something. Take the initiative and say something yourself.
For a little over a year now, I’ve been making a point of writing authors and letting them know when I’ve really liked something they’ve written. I write people I know and writers I have never met. I’m going to start expanding this to other forms. There’s no reason I have to save my fannish enthusiasm for the printed word.
Now, you may be a major consumer of media, and you might be wondering, how can I possibly send notes to the creators of everything I consume? When it’s something you’ve paid for, I think your money is often appreciation enough. However, if it’s something you’ve read online for free, and you enjoyed it, I think we should feel obligated to share our positive feedback. If you want people to keep doing what they’re doing, you need to say so. Again–don’t assume someone else will do it for you. We should be as energized to share our enthusiasm as our outrage.
I hope you’ll join me in this-I don’t want to say “movement,” but let’s call it a pseudo-philosophy. I probably won’t convince the die-hard assholes to stop being assholes, but hopefully I can convince we quiet approvers to speak up more often. I know I’m not perfect, that I’ve been the asshole, but I’m making a concerted effort not to be in the future.
I’m sure there are a lot of criticisms of this post you can make, and you’re welcome to do so in the comments. Please follow the rules above. Consider this my new comment moderation policy on my blog. I hope I don’t have to enforce it.
On Handling Criticism.
Filed Under: Writing Advice
Copyblogger recently posted an article on how to handle criticism. This is a subject that, as a creative person, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and struggling with, so I thought I’d talk about their points tonight and examine them from my own point of view.
1. Enjoy it.
Criticism isn’t always bad in my experience (although it definitely tends to have negative connotations). It’s mostly good for you, but sometimes it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Basically, criticism is broccoli. I’ve never been one to enjoy broccoli, and criticism is something that you don’t naturally join. Those with fragile self-esteem have a tendency to take any kind of criticism negatively. The key is generally to try and keep it impersonal. The criticism is not about you, it’s about the work, and remember, you are not your work (that comment is directed at me as much as it is my general audience, let me tell you…).
So yeah, I can agree with this point, if you can manage it. Remind yourself that criticism is an important component of getting better, when it’s constructive. And if’ it’s terrible criticism, try and laugh about how bad it is. I actually find that the more hyperbolic negative criticism is, the funnier it is for me, and the easier it is to enjoy it.
On the Escape Pod blog, we have one commenter who never, ever says anything positive. Sometimes this commenter is on-target, but the way this commenter says everything is classic Troll Class One. I was irritated with it at first, but over time, I’ve come to find this commenter pretty funny. Their act never changes though.
2. Nobody’s right.
Yeah, everything is subjective, blah blah blah. This is perhaps true when we’re talking about subjective matters, but when it comes to facts, that’s baloney. Someone is right and someone is wrong. Generally, it is you that is wrong, and it is Nick Mamatas that is right. In fact, that should be the main corollary to this point. “Nobody’s right, except Nick Mamatas.” You can disagree with this, but I don’t recommend that you actually argue the point. You will lose.
3. Some people just won’t get it.
Copyblogger makes the point that some people are “just idiots.” This is true, but I would consider this an observation of last resort. If the criticism completely misses the point, there are two possibilities (or more, but two basic ones). One is that the person making the criticism has a reading comprehension below the level you wrote (is
“an idiot” is a bit strong). The other possibility is that you didn’t do a very good job of conveying it. Me, I always take criticism seriously and evaluate it for possible value. Unless it’s full of grammar and spelling mistakes. Those are pretty easy to ignore, because, yeah, some people are idiots. They make themselves very easy to spot most of the time. Except for stealth idiots, like Chance from Being There. More on them some other time.
4. Look for a new idea.
I really like this point. Examine criticism for an idea you’ve never had before. I’ve failed to do this almost every time my work has received criticism when it comes to writing. I often get stuck in a thinking rut and my ruts get so deep that it’s hard to see over the sides of them. This is because I can be a real self-centered prick from time to time (hopefully not very often these days). As much as anything else, this point serves as a reminder to offer at least a modicum of respect to the ideas of others. Just because you didn’t have the idea doesn’t mean it has no value. (Again. Talking to me here.)
5. Let it go.
This is the hardest aspect of Copyblogger’s advice for me. Some people let criticism roll off them like water off a duck’s back. Criticism often sticks to me like a very well-aimed spitball. I have a very difficult time shaking it off even if I don’t believe it. This problem probably resides in a shaky self-esteem more than anything else. I am eager at times to believe the negative thigns said about my work and myself. That’s a personal problem, but it is easier said than done for some of us to just let it go. I know enough to let my inability to let it go remain a personal issue. What you should rarely do, in my opinion, is respond to criticism that you can’t let go. Down that path lies madness and a damaged reputation.
People with unshakable self-esteem and belief in themselves are easily the most successful people in creative endeavors from my experience. They don’t get knocked down by criticism and they definitely know how to let it go. If I had to pick one personality trait that I would like to develop to make me a better creative person, it would be a true and deep belief in myself. I’m working on it, but I know that it’s not always there, and so I have a ways to go.
I had some justifiably harsh and unhappy criticism on some of my work waiting for me when I woke up this morning. I was letting it really get to me at first, until I stumbled upon this post over at Copyblogger, and it reminded me of the lessons I have learned in the past. I took what I could from it, disagreed with some of it (but understood the perspective of it), but ultimately decided that the best thing to do was to let it go and move on and try not to make the same mistakes in the future in future work.
Obsessing over your mistakes and your criticism doesn’t help. That’s the most important lesson for me and articles like this serve to help drive that lesson home again and again.
Jason Stoddard is Wrong about Science Fiction
Filed Under: Speculative Fiction, Writing Advice
Jason has a nice post up about the demands placed on science fiction writers who write believable near-future SF today. You should read it. I think he’s wrong, but you should read it.*
I think focusing on the science aspects of science fiction is missing the point. Science fiction is fiction first, and only tangentially about science. Some of my favorite SF tales arguably have zero science in them. I’d even go so far as to say science fiction is just a genre of fiction with a set of tropes that sometimes involve science, or the future, but doesn’t always, and doesn’t have to. But let’s focus on the idea of near-future SF. It’s a small subset of what’s written, but it is a subset.
Jason says:
To write fully believable, near future science fiction today, you almost need to be voracious antisocial polymath, deeply conversant in half a dozen technical fields, as well as familiar with ongoing social, economic, and environmental change.
First of all, to have any kind off successful writing career, you need to be somewhat antisocial because you rarely make enough money to do it full time, which means you use leisure time to do it, and often a lot of leisure time, which means you won’t be seeing your friends much. It’s a solitary pursuit for the most part. But that’s not what I wanted to say about that quote. This is:
I take exception to is the notion that you need to be deeply conversant in anything. I think you just need to do research to the point where what you have to say doesn’t break the suspension of disbelief and I think that’s a long ways from being a polymath. You don’t need to be an expert on anything but people.
One of the appeals to a certain kind of writer of SF is that they get to do research. These writers sometimes have a tendency to inflict their research upon the reader whether it matters or not. As I get older, I care a lot less about the believability of the science in my stories than I do about the actual story and the characters. I was recently reading a nice space opera by a friend of mine, and as I was digging through info-term-dense paragraph after paragraph talking about technologies underlying starship mechanics and such, I thought–I have been conditioned to find this acceptable in a story, I kind of enjoy it because I am a big nerd, but I don’t think it makes the story any better. Senswunda’s one thing–I dig that. But I only care about the details so long as they relate to the core of the story, and a lot of times in this kind of SF, they don’t. The Analog mafia might like that sort of thing, but I don’t. I don’t need equations in my fiction, and I rarely find that they improve it.
I also don’t like my SF to be predicative. I don’t like it to be realistic, necessarily. Neither does most of the world. Your science fiction does not need to be well-researched, and you do not need to be an expert on quantum mechanics to write science fiction. In fact, I would argue that the more conversant you are in these details, and the more you force into your novel or story, the smaller your audience is. Star Wars doesn’t trouble itself with the mechanics of FTL. It’s pretty damned successful with audiences.
Jason concludes with a very nice zinger:
Otherwise, your fiction will soon read like that Golden Age lit, filled with spaceships manned by human calculators and spinning reels of tape.
That’s the universal failing of ALL near-future SF, no matter how well researched it is. They couldn’t get it right when technology wasn’t accelerating as fast in the 50s, and near-future SF writers are probably not getting it right now either with things clipping along faster. So why bother? Getting it “right” is not the point. It shouldn’t be about anything the now through the lens of tools that SF has developed. You can say things about the future that you can’t say about the present. Projecting those comments onto the future gives you a little distance to say those things. That’s the primary reason we set stuff in the future. It might as well all be alternate history, or alternate universe stories. The inclusion of alt history in the SF greater genre just proves my point here. You can’t write a What-If story without extrapolating from the present (or past). It’s an examination of what the truth really is through the fiction of what wasn’t or what could be (a departure from the truth).
If you’re intimidated by the accelerating advance of the future, don’t let that stop you from writing SF. You don’t have to write it that way. Personally, I take great enjoyment in throwing reality out the window when I write my SF. SF has only ever been about believability to a small subset of readers. Believability in the context of tech, anyway. It, like all literature, does revolve around the believability of human action and emotion, however. Keep that in mind and you’ll write great fiction, and very few people will care about that other stuff. Nobody looks at the tech in 1984 and complains about it.
By now you should realize that I don’t really think Jason is wrong. I just wrote that headline to get your attention so you could watch me hash out for myself what I think is important about science fiction. Jason and everyone else who wants to can go about trying to master every field they want to include in their fiction, and try to make the near-future believable with multiple points of advancement. I applaud it. A not-small number of people will read it and enjoy it, maybe including myself from time to time. They’ll almost certainly get something wrong and some will bitch and moan about it too. I just don’t find these kinds of stories very memorable. You might get lucky and nail some prediction on the head and then become a footnote in history for having some foresight (see Arthur C. Clarke and the prediction/invention of satellites. We know he did it, but I couldn’t tell you in what story). But you don’t need it to write good stories.
My opinion and approach? Forget all of that. The core of a story is timeless, and none of that really matters. Understand people before you understand quantum mechanics or network infrastructure. That’ll take you much further in fiction than any other knowledge set. Senswunda exists independently of prediction, and that is what matters to me. If that makes me more of a fantasy writer than a SF writer, then so be it.
So no, Jason Stoddard is not really wrong. He’s just wrong for me. You can make up your own mind about what you think.
